Free Secrets of a Viscount by Rose Gordon Page B

benefit of no one save Mrs. Finch.
    “Is he the one, then?” Edmund asked without ceremony.
    Isabelle started. “Who, what one?” Why did everyone keep asking her that?
    Edmund waggled his eyebrows at her. “Lord Belgrave. Is he the one you’re throwing me over for?” he teased.
    “ No,” she said quickly, perhaps too quickly because Edmund began to chuckle. She frowned at him. He knew of everything that had happened between her and Sebastian. How could he sit there and even suggest such a thing? “We’re just old friends, nothing more.”
    “ Old friends,” he repeated. “I see. So your friendship with him is the reason for the sharp banter yesterday and the coded messages today?”
    She tucked a tendril of her red hair behind her ear. “I’d say that sounds correct.”
    Edmund shook his head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think there was still something there between the two of you.”
    “ But you do know better,” she said, scowling. There had never  been anything between them at all except a form of friendship when they were younger, and that only came in the form of him tolerating her as best he could just so he’d have a playmate. For her part, she’d done the best she could making sure not to annoy him more than was necessary and not allowing herself dream up any sort of misguided notions that he might one day fall in love with her and become her husband. He was a lord and she was common, not to mention poor. It wasn’t done.
    Truly, she’d done her best to accomplish both tasks—though not always as well as he, or she, might have liked. Though she annoyed him, he always helped her out of any scrape she got into. Just like now. Although, she must admit, him helping her snag a husband was significantly less endearing than when he’d helped her climb down for a tree he’d told her was too high for her to climb.
    “Indeed.” His word drew her from her trance and he picked off a small string from his buckskin trousers and let it flutter to the floor. “And what of Mr. Appleton. Is he just a friend, too?”
    She released a breath and fidgeted with the lace that circled her sleeve. All friends. Only friends. “Yes, Edmund, Mr. Appleton is just a friend, too.”
    “Now, that I believe.”
    She jerked her gaze to his. “What is that to mean?”
    He waved her off. “Every fool can see that you and Mr. Appleton are just friends—even if he does pretend to write you poetry meant for another lady.”
    She blushed. “He was just trying to save me from Sebastian.”
    “Sebastian,” Edmund murmured, reminding Isabelle of a parrot. “I see that the two of you are still on very informal terms. You call him by his first name and he calls you Belle.”
    “ Only when he’s irritated with me.”
    “ I disagree. I don’t think he was irritated with you today. Or yesterday.”
    She dismissed his statement with a quick shrug. “It must just be a habit he hasn’t broken.”
    “Perhaps, but have you ever wondered if he spells it Belle, like the last part of your name or Bel, like the first part of his title?”
    Isabelle narrowed her eyes at him. What had gotten into the man? Was he cracked? Who thought about such things? Edmund, that’s who. She shook her head. Sebastian only ever spoke to her, one didn’t think of how something was spelled while they were speaking. At least she didn’t. Edmund might be different, but she was fairly certain if he did that, he was truly a rarity. She couldn’t tell him that though.
    “I’m not sure which spelling he’d use if he were to write it—” probably ‘B-e-l-l’ if she had to guess— “but I’m curious as to why you’d care.”
    “ I’m just trying to educate myself on my competition.”
    Isabelle laughed. “Sebastian isn’t your competition.”
    Edmund lifted a brow. “Then who is?”
    If she had a genuine marital interest in Edmund, she’d consider playfully teasing him by listing off the three names Sebastian had suggested, but